Cowboys Down (28 page)

It took a moment for Calum to register he was talking about Ring and Pete and not him and his father.

“Then Ring changed his story and said Jasper tried to force him into sex.” Luke stared at Calum.

“No way,” Calum said.

“We might have gone some way to believing that one, but Pete didn’t go down that road,” said Kosak. “And the longer we left Ring, the more he came up with and the more unconvincing he became.”

Luke leaned forward in his chair. “The interesting thing is, Jasper’s not said much, but one thing he definitely hasn’t said is that you are in any way involved with each other.”

Calum sighed. “He’s trying to protect me.”
The stupid, lovable idiot.

“Why?” Kosak asked.

“Because no one’s supposed to know I’m gay.”

Luke snorted. “Hell, Calum, we all knew at school. We just ignored it.”

Calum managed a small smile. “Guess I didn’t do such a good job of hiding it then. My dad is hoping they’ll invent a pill to convert me.”

“You married, didn’t you?” Luke asked.

“Briefly. No one can say I haven’t tried to be what my father wanted.”

“How do you get on with Marty Shaw?” Luke asked.

Calum frowned. What did Marty have to do with anything? “Like most ranchers get on with their neighbors. Good and bad. Why?”

“When we confronted Ring and Pete over their contradictory stories, they both changed to the same one. They’ve been working for Marty Shaw to undermine the Neilson ranch. Your father refused to sell this place to Marty but seems he didn’t want to take no for an answer.”

Calum picked his jaw up off the floor. “Marty said that?”

“Not yet, but I think he will,” Kosak said. “He’s being questioned.”

“Christ,” Calum muttered.

“They reckon Marty wanted Erik shut down so he could run the only dude ranch in the area,” Kosak said. “It was a win-win situation for Pete. Paid for working as ranch foreman for Erik, he claims he also pocketed money from Marty to make sure guests grew increasingly dissatisfied with their vacation.”

Calum’s jaw ticked.
The bastard.

“Pete also wanted your father to grow increasingly dissatisfied with you,” Luke added. “It was a two-pronged attack. Marty wanted to persuade your father to sell to him, but he didn’t want the ranch left to you if your father died. I suspect Pete had milked his cash cow for too long and either Marty suggested a guest should die or Pete did.”

Calum wondered if Marty cared who they’d picked. Had Ring and Pete only gone after Jasper because of him?

Kosak leaned forward. “Before Marty clammed up and asked for his lawyer, it was clear he hated your father’s guts. He practically spat when he talked about him.”

“Marty and my dad have some sort of grudge that occasionally flares up. I’ve no idea what it’s about.”

Kosak sighed. “I do. I was at school with Marty and your dad. Your mom was a mighty pretty woman. She chose Erik, and Marty never got over it.”

“But Marty’s married. He’s been with Lois as long as I can remember. She and Mom were friends.” And it had always puzzled Calum that the Shaws had never been invited onto the Neilson ranch.

“When your mother died, Marty got drunk and smashed up a bar in Jackson,” Kosak said. “He blamed your father for her death.”

Calum felt his world was unraveling. “She died of cancer. How could that be anyone’s fault?” The familiar ache hit him in the gut when he thought of his mom and her promise not to die, a promise she’d known she couldn’t keep.

“Lois told him your father kept saying it was nothing to worry about and by the time your mother went to the doctor, it was too late.” Kosak stared straight at him.

“Oh God. How do you know all this?”
It’s my father’s fault?

“Lois is my wife’s sister.”

Calum spent the rest of the day on autopilot. Vera came back with Angie and the news that his father had been transferred to the University hospital where they’d operate tomorrow. Neither of them had seen Jasper but had been told he was comfortable.
What the hell did that mean?
Kosak had called to say Ring and Pete had been charged with attempted murder. Calum’s stomach churned at the thought of Jasper not having been found. If Angie hadn’t given Jasper that bracelet, if they hadn’t been glow-in-the-dark beads, if…if…if… Calum was desperate to go to the hospital to see him, but he couldn’t just walk out.

The ranch was shorthanded. He’d have to double up the guests with the wranglers. Gunner could handle the grain delivery. The kitchen staff could function without Vera’s supervision for a day or so. The remaining activities the guests could choose to do were visits to Yellowstone or to the local hot springs. Calum spent an hour in his father’s office, going through paperwork, making sure no bills were due to be paid, responding to emails from prospective guests, but his mind constantly strayed to thinking about Jasper.

Calum looked up when he heard the knock at the door.

“You all right?” Vera asked. She looked tired and drawn but keeping it together. Her gaze fell on the desk, strewn with papers. “You don’t have to do everything straightaway.”

“I know.”

“Your father wants to see you.”

“Now?” Calum stiffened.

Vera nodded.

He pushed himself to his feet. “The guests okay? Staff okay? You okay?” He wrapped his arms around Vera and gave her a hug. Her fingers gripped him tight for a moment.

“The guests are fine. Staff’s overexcited but fine. I’m fine.”

Christ, we’re all experts at hiding how we feel.

“He should have had bypass surgery a long while ago,” Vera said.

Calum pulled away to look at her.

“He kept putting it off, putting it off. Now he has no choice.” She gave a grim smile. “You two have so much in common. Avoiding issues, stubborn as mules, letting problems grow into impassable mountains.”

“Not impassable,” Calum whispered.

“No, that’s true. Passable with care. Go and see him, Calum.”

He hugged her again and pressed his face into her hair. “Love you, Mom,” he whispered.

When he felt Vera shake, regret for what he could have said and done years ago rose into his throat and choked him. She pushed something into his hand and Calum looked down to see another of Angie’s bracelets.

Vera smiled and wiped a tear from her cheek. “She wants Jasper to have it in case he gets lost again.”

As Calum rode the elevator to his father’s room, he glanced at his watch. By the time he made it to the other hospital, he doubted they’d let him see Jasper, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try. But first he had to speak to the man he didn’t really want to see. Had his father delayed his mother seeking medical advice? He was a bull of a guy, never admitting to any of his own aches and pains, but Calum remembered him being gentle with his mother. He didn’t want to believe his father would have brushed away her worries over her health.

His father opened his eyes when Calum walked into his room. He looked shrunken somehow, much smaller than the man he knew. The bed was surrounded by machines, and it struck Calum that his father might die and this could be his only chance to make things right.

“How are you feeling?” Calum asked.

“Absolutely fine. Can’t understand why they don’t let me out of here.”

Calum rolled his eyes. “Mom sent these.” He didn’t miss his father’s startled glance.

“Mom?” Erik muttered.

Calum put a bag down on the bedside table. “A book she says you ought to read and your puzzle book. She’s ripped out the answers to stop you cheating. She’ll be here tomorrow with Angie before your op.”

“Mom?” Erik repeated. “What changed?”

“Something Jasper said to me.”

Erik scowled.

Calum took a deep breath. “When did Mom find out she had cancer?”

He supposed he deserved the puzzled look Erik shot him.

“Nine months, three weeks and two days before she died.” Erik worried the sheet with his fingers. “She found a lump and didn’t tell me. By the time she went to see the doc, it had spread. She should have told me. I don’t know why she didn’t.” He sighed. “Maybe I do. I don’t like weakness. I didn’t allow myself to be ill and I think she thought that applied to her too. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t blame myself for her death.”

And Calum knew that no matter what Marty’s wife had said, his father was telling the truth. Maybe Lois had her own agenda, married to a man who still held a torch for a woman he couldn’t have. At least this wasn’t something else to blame his father for.

“How’s everything at the ranch?” his father asked.

“Fine.”

A snort was the response to that. “Two of my wranglers try to kill a guest and everything is fine?”

“Ring and Pete are in custody. The guests think this is the most exciting vacation they’ve ever had and two of them have booked again for next year.”

That brought a smile to his father’s face. “Think you’re up to handling things until I’m back on my feet?”

Calum bristled and made himself take a deep breath before he responded. “I’ll do my best.”

“I heard you gave me CPR. Saved my life.”

Calum shrugged.

“If you do a good job of running the ranch until I’m back, I’ll make you foreman.”

And Calum felt his father had thrown a chain around his neck. What he’d once wanted was not what he wanted now.

“Not going to ask why Pete and Ring did it?” Calum asked.

“Guess they feel a little more strongly about gays than I do.”

You bastard.
“Going to ask how Jasper is?”

“No.”

Fucking bastard.
And Calum no longer wanted to make things right. The guy would never change and there was somewhere else Calum wanted to be.

“Seth isn’t mine,” Calum said. “Suz was running a scam. He’s Dean’s kid. Suz cheated on me. I never cheated on her.”

His father’s eyes widened. “I thought—”

“I know what you thought, but you never asked.” Calum stepped toward the bed and landed a clumsy kiss on his startled father’s cheek. “Good luck tomorrow.” Then he walked out.

Jasper opened his eyes when the nurse bent over him. The Hispanic guy had a sweet face and smelled of lemons.

“You awake?” he asked Jasper.

I am now.

“You have a visitor. It’s after-hours, but I can let him in for a couple of minutes if you feel up to it.”

Jasper shook his head. “No, not up to it.”

He tried not to wince at the pain. It wasn’t just his body that ached but his heart. There was nothing in the world he wanted more than to see Calum, which was exactly why he couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t. Better for both of them to break like this.

The nurse left and a few minutes later, the door opened again. Jasper held his breath because the idiot part of him wanted Calum to take no notice of what the nurse said and burst in to see him and tell him he lo—
Ah fuck
. The nurse came up to the bed and put something in Jasper’s hand. Jasper knew what it was before he looked at it. Another bracelet.

When the police had interviewed him, they’d told him Calum had followed the trail of beads. If it hadn’t been for the gift from a sweet child in a woman’s body, Jasper suspected he’d be dead.

On the third day, when Calum was told he couldn’t see Jasper, he realized it wasn’t a medical problem keeping them apart but Jasper’s choice. He’d been asked to bring Jasper’s bags, discovered hidden behind a stack of timber, and Calum had washed and folded the clothes himself, and then packed them with an immovable lump in his throat. The police had kept the tie that had been used to gag Jasper, but Calum took another from his bag. He wanted it to remind him of how he’d used the tie to pull Jasper in for that kiss. In the heart of the suitcase, he placed a well-wrapped package and hoped it survived the trip back to London.

Calum hadn’t wanted to accept that Jasper didn’t want to see him anymore but he wasn’t going to push. A word with the nurse confirmed there was no point coming the next day because Jasper wouldn’t be there. Pete and Ring hadn’t made bail yet. Calum hoped they fried the bastards. His father had sailed through the operation and was issuing orders from his hospital bed, most of which Calum had already dealt with. Another load of guests had arrived, half of whom hadn’t ridden before. Calum had taken on two more wranglers who seemed to be working out fine.

Note to self: Everything is fine, fine, fucking fine—as long as I stop thinking about Jasper.

Chapter Sixteen

“Two bloody weeks leave? How did you wrangle that, you jammy devil?” Ken Adams asked as Jasper passed him in the corridor.

Ken didn’t wait for an answer. Jasper had told his boss not to tell anyone why he was late coming back, including his uncle who was one of the firm’s partners, and in any case, Jasper hadn’t told his boss the entire truth. Easier to say he’d been attacked, hospitalized, and leave it at that. Even so, Jasper expected the office gossip machine to invent salacious details during the coffee breaks.